User talk:Yethic
K. Not sure how to do this but I'll just add what I am doing. I have been doing some experimenting with altering rulesets and have discovered quite a few things. Some regarding AI, some with undocumented options and some to do with hints and tips. AI In the beginning, the ai will build "city builders" (Settlers in the default ruleset) until it can't support them, then it will build other types of units. This means that if you remove the food upkeep cost, the ai will run itself into bankruptcy building them while not building others. Edit! This only applies when the ai starts on smaller islands. The ai will only spam city builders until it gains a certain amount of cities, after which it behaves more intelligently. So if it is stuck on an island without room for the min number, it stays locked in the "settler cycle." Furthermore, the ai will not consider using transports with less than 3 moves only one trasport slot to send settlers to other islands, even if the gap is only 1 square. So adding early sea transports (e.g. "Boats" in the Ancient era ruleset) acts as a handycap to ai players. They will build one or 2, but not use them. Edit! It is not the speed, it is the transport capacity! The ai will happily use Boats if the capacity is increased to 2. The ai does not build fortresses. For any reason. When writing a ruleset, keep this in mind and think of ways you can offset this for ai players. This also means you should not make building fortresses/bases a necessity/over powered (e.g. bases that add resources, enable units/buildings etc). The ai does not understand Tech upkeep. Do not use it or they will periodically set all income to gold (the ai has no tax level limits) and find themselves back in the stone age. This gets boring fast. In a similar vein, the CM (city manager) doesn't understand gold upkeep style 1, and will continually set citizens to tax collectors when pre-bonus gold <-20 (Most cities by 1000ad are like this). Style 0 (no gold upkeep) or Style 2 (gold upkeep comes from empire level, not city level) works fine. Undocumented Options In the terrain ruleset, where specials are listed in terrains, you can repeat specials to change the percentage. E.g; resources = "resource_game", "resource_furs", "resource_furs" Means that, when the map generator decides this terrain gets a special, 1/3 of the time it will pick game and the remaining 2/3 will be fur. This can be used for another reason. Ever wanted to be able to transform mountains with gold into hills and keep the gold, but don't want gold to appear (or at least appear rarely) in hills? Modify the hills resource list as following; resources = "resource_coal", "resource_wine", "resource_coal", "resource_wine", "resource_coal", "resource_wine", "resource_coal", "resource_wine", "resource_coal", "resource_wine", "resource_coal", "resource_wine", "resource_coal", "resource_wine", "resource_coal", "resource_wine", "resource_coal", "resource_wine", "resource_gold", "resource_iron" Now 9/20 specials on hills will be coal, another 9/20 will be wine, and just 1/20 will be iron or gold. This means that in a normal map, there may be no hills with iron or gold, but you can transform mountains into hills without losing their specials. You can do the same with plains to make deserts more transformation friendly; resources = "resource_buffalo", "resource_wheat", "resource_buffalo", "resource_wheat", "resource_buffalo", "resource_wheat", "resource_buffalo", "resource_wheat", "resource_buffalo", "resource_wheat", "resource_buffalo", "resource_wheat", "resource_buffalo", "resource_wheat", "resource_buffalo", "resource_wheat", "resource_buffalo", "resource_wheat", "resource_buffalo", "resource_wheat", "resource_oasis", "resource_oil" This makes a lot of sense for mineral specials, and even some plant animal ones (at least for similar terrains). Yethic 08:47, June 13, 2012 (UTC)